This is all about the organization that aims to transform the Illinois Democratic Party from within. PDI also exists to act as a bridging organization between Progressive groups throughout Illinois. It's time for a cohesive Progressive movement, and we intend to facilitate exactly that.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

[PDI] York PC 112: Page One: Inside The New York Times - A Documentary Film...

*** SENT THROUGH PDI MAILING LIST ***...that goes in-depth into the day-to-day operations of the New York Times.

"Page One" unfolds over the course of 2010, one of the most tumultuous yearsfor print journalism since the invention of the printing press, with onlinemedia continuing to reinvent the rules and some of the oldest printnewspaper institutions in the country forced to close or drastically reducetheir operations. Along the course of the year, director Rossi was givenunprecedented access to the editorial process at "The New York Times."

Notes from Dan:

My wife and I just saw this film at the Glenn Art Theater in downtown GlennEllyn. The film is excellent, and kept me interested all the way through. Itraises several questions, most of which have yet to be answered. I stronglyrecommend seeing this film.

The largest question that the movie raises is whether or not large ol-mediaorganizations such as the New York Times will be able to survive, and alsowhether it matters if they survive or not. There are several arguments onboth sides, with very good points.

Personally, I think the answer on whether it matters if these institutionssurvive lies somewhere between the extremes of letting them die and keepingthem in print. I think the print edition is accessible to those who can'tafford technology, or are unable to adapt to modern web technology. I alsothink that a billion bloggers still can't match the focused investigativedepth that a full-blown newsroom of the Times' caliber is capable of. Thereare very few in online media who can come close to the access and full-timedevotion to a story such institutions are capable of.

Of course, those arguments only hold true if such institutions decide tofollow a given story, and if they verify that their sources are in-factaccurate and that trusted insiders aren't abusing the institution. JudithMiller and the run-up to the Iraq war come to mind. The cost of thatparticular debacle to U.S., Iraqi, and international society has beenimmense and horrific.

Old media also can't effectively cover the full breadth of global news ormatch the flash-speed of an online story gone viral. It's like comparing abattery of brilliant spotlights to the flashes of lightning in a massivethunderstorm system. They just aren't the same thing. One istightly-controlled and narrowly focused, the other is wide-ranging andintensely-fast, but also erratic and un-controlled, without duration anddepth.

Trust is an issue with both forms of media, explicitly in the case ofinternet stories, and implicitly in the case of corporate-owned (and likelycorporate-controlled) monolithic old-media. After all, it is just as easy totwist truth in reporting by omission as it is by saying outright falsehoods,and both are dangerous things in an open society that is trulycitizen-governed.

My personal leaning is to have as wide as possible scope of headlineinformation so that I can choose what to follow in-depth myself. I thinkthis "big-picture" view is indispensable, and that the past ten years haveexposed many things that are deep internal threats to our democracy and wayof life, and even more importantly, to our future survivability as aspecies.

If we were still operating in an era entirely dominated by large-scalemonolithic one-way media, there are many things that the large corporationsand extremely-wealthy would have kept hidden from the masses. Without theresources of those institutions, we would lose the deep investigative powerof a fully-developed newsroom. In the end, I think it will be necessary tostrip the old-media from corporate hands and merge it with the new-mediaflash-mob zeitgeist of global information.

The interesting thing is, it seems to me that varying forms of exactly thatare starting to come into being. The old-media and the top-of-classnew-media are coming up with their own versions of just such organizations.It's the financial structures that have yet to be figured out in the mostobsessive-compulsive capitalist society ever to exist on Earth. Even theFerenghi on Star Trek would have a hard time competing with modern Americanand trans-national corporations.

Today, however, and in the next few years to come, the story remains to befully-written. There are multiple plots involved, and it boils down to thevery large few and the very small many, and how they interact. I believethat if either fails to value and support the other sufficiently, the wholesystem will break down.

Given the stories I'm seeing in all forms of media over the last few years,I think that most people in either paradigm are in for someseriously-hard-knock schooling on this point. I sincerely hope I'm wrong,and that things will find a way to mesh that everyone can live with.